Photoshop Election Map

I was reading this boingboing post about a red/blue election map that adjusted the red-blue color based on a percentage of the voters in that state. The evenly divided states were purple, with the difference between those that went "red" barely noticable from those that went "blue".

They also linked to a USA Today map that broke the traditional red/blue down by county and someone did a purple map for counties as well. I noticed USA Today also had the 2000 results in the same format so I thought I could take their maps and do a quick photoshop calculation to reveal the counties that changed from 2000 to 2004.

Note: Alaska had no results on the 2004 map and Hawaii was Democrat, unchanged. Black areas are unreported counties from 2004.


Click for larger image

UPDATE: I know a lot of people have looked at this map, and with the lack of comments, I fear that perhaps I didn't make the map's key clear.

Blue areas are counties that voted republican for president in both 2000 and 2004
Green areas are counties that voted democrat for president in both 2000 and 2004
Red areas are counties that voted republican for president in 2000 and democrat in 2004.
Yellow areas are counties that voted democrat for president in 2000 and republican in 2004.

In essence, blue and green areas stayed the same while red and yellow areas switched parties.

What stories does this tell? Well, I think its clear that the era of the "Dixiecrat" is over, the Democrats are losing thier strength in the south. As suburban sprawl expands in places like Colorado, and Minnesota, traditionally republican areas start to fade in to democrat areas. Interesting, still, the southern tip of texas remains pretty strongly democrat, with only 2 counties switching to republican.

I see the map as a type of Rorschach, and I wonder what other people see in it. What's your take? What did you come looking for in an election map? What conclusions do you hope to see and have you been dissapointed? What do you think this map will look like in 2008?

UPDATE: For reference, here is a link to all historical presidential election results